Monday, 6 April 2015

Electric Jive Jukebox: Isitimela Sase Tekwini

This jukebox idea came from an idle daydream about how much space would be needed to store one of every record that was ever made and pressed in Johannesburg since 1932 when Eric Gallo established South Africa's first press.

South Africa's recorded music heritage is one such "jukebox" with too many lost, forgotten and out-of-print musical creations. An uncounted large number of recordings have been made to cater for diverse and eclectic musical, tribal and sub-cultural tastes. In the course of digging for records I have turned up some great music on 78rpms or 45rpms that I cannot find on albums. So, how then to present them on this blog?

The original records were bought by a sizable urban African populace and enjoyed at household parties, shebeens, fund-raising dances in halls. While I cannot find evidence of jukeboxes having played much part in this scene, the idea of a "jukebox selection" makes for a comfortably loose way of grouping some rare and out of print records together for a post on Electric Jive.

Imagine if you will, a massive jukebox filled with the most diverse representation of sounds that were recorded and sold in cities and towns across the country. Traditional tribal "trance" recordings made by visitors to the studios, gospel and religious choirs, mbaqanga, soul, jazz, disco, funk - it was all very much part of the possible "selection" from what was available.

Electric Jive Jukebox Number One is a selection of 60s mbaqanga with some swing and jive themed around a train-ride holiday-to-Durban. Some great female vocal jive, swing and mbaqanga for a sub-tropical Durban holiday feeling ... just like it has been this long-weekend. Enjoy

18 comments:

hey man, loving the blog; crate digging classics all the way trough. quite consistent in style as well, nice job.I noticed the download link in this post refers to a single mp3, change it to the link to album, mediafire?

Chris, thank you! there are some great sounds here. The mIx tape/ jukebox playlist is fun and the format allows immediate play but as ever there are favourites that I want to keep and access separately and then repeats of inexisting tracks that I own or have downloaded from the blog already over the years that I would prefere to be able to cut out in order to deduplicate. It is probably more hassle for you or you might be doing it to prevent the tracks from being highjacked and posted elsewhere without reference to Electric JIve but all things considered, I think many of the fans of the blog would appreciate the posting of a secondary link to a play list with separatable tracks (as you have done in the past with "Office Christmas party" playslists) . Let us know your thoughts when you get the time ....

Great to hear from you eyepictures - thanks for your thoughtful comment. I agree: it would be ideal to share these recordings as before. Some careful reconsideration is underway among the Electric Jive team. The reason being: People been selling the music we shared for free at electricjive....even lifting the pictures from the site. This example below is not the first one. There is another example of an entire bootleg vinyl LP being for sale.Original post: http://electricjive.blogspot.co.uk/…/mabel-mafuya-on-78-rpm…For sale at amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/Zulu-Jive-78-Rpm-1956/dp/B00UC0SNWUThe offending label: MUSICAL ARKWhat do you think?

Hi Chris it is a I feared then ....If course I am very sad to hear of this even though I feared that that was at the nub of things. Your generosity of spirit in the sharing of 'lost' music and the carefully researched notes you guys add reilluminating the lives of musicians was I guess always open to abuse and it was a matter of "when" rather than "if" this was going to happen. I myself noticed tracks that were clearly lifted from this site posted to You Tube last year sometime... the source was unacknowledged which I though bad form but no one was making money off your finds.... oh well, I guess I will just wait and see what happens.... but thank you for explaining the situation and more importantly thank you all yet again for all the audial pleasure and the odd hop skip and twist moments you have afforded me personally over the years I have followed you so far!

Oh no! In every sphere of human endeavour there appears to be a devil that spoils it all for everybody! Only greed, selfishness and/or malice would motivate people to act so thoughtlessly. ElectricJive is a blog par excellence for selflessly unearthing and availing exotic music sounds that one can otherwise just dream of in the modern day. Ain't no way of bringing the heinous perpetrators to book, Chris?

Anonymous, chances are you are referring to 'Sithunyiwe Thokozile', the original recording of which you can access via Nick Lotay's post 'Good Luck Motella' on this blog (also Mavuthela - The Sound of the Sixties). A more laid-back remix by the same outfit is on Chris's 'Phezulu Eqhudeni' and a sax instrumental on Nick's 'Sax Jive Special Vol. 2'.

Hi Chris Been meaning to thank you for the last update of Phiri the Musical i managed to get it right? Just a quick one, the recordings of Thandi on this album is it Thandi Klaasen who was Thandi Mpambane?and i also wanted to find out you dont have by any chance any tracks of Dolly Rathebe that has never seen the day of light? tracks thats no where to be found i believe she did make like 20 studio recordings in the 50's but theres hardly anything available. If you do have any, would really appreciate some sharing

Sorry to be pedantic - but can you check if the catalogue number of the Boy Masaka track is COLUMBIA YE 6058 rather than YE 0658 - I have a feeling the latter would date it to the early 50s rather than 60s. I have a few discs by him in the YE 6100s and I guess that this is just a bit earlier than that circa 1962